Just two days after the massacres, he invited Spencer and Gabriel on
to discuss the attacks, and almost immediately the subject of refugees
came up, with Gabriel claiming that their ranks were filled with young
recruits for radical Islamist ideology:

HANNITY: But are we dealing with a clash of cultures –
Western civilization and people who come from countries where perhaps
they grew up under Sharia law? Is this now going to be a growing problem
here in the U.S., if in fact we take in refugees from Syria, and Iraq,
and elsewhere?

GABRIEL: It has been a problem, Sean, and the West has been dealing
with a war with a clash of civilization. The problem is that the West is
refusing to acknowledge the fact that we are at war, despite the fact
that our enemies tell us that repeatedly – ‘We are at war with you. We
are at war with you. We do not like your ways. We abhor your immorality.
We abhor your materialism.’ This is how they view us, at least the
people in France were honest enough to express their opinion.

Now the same thing is happening in America today. Poll after poll
have showed that. And what we are concerned about right now is these
so-called refugees that we are bringing. People are coming to our
shores who do not share our values, even though they are not raised
necessarily or born into countries that adhere to Sharia law. But with
the uprise of Islamic radicalism throughout the world, they are all
experiencing the rebirth of spiritual Islam, of the Islam of Mohammad,
and that is what they are gravitating to and bringing to our shores.

Hannity (who proceeded to talk over and ignore his sole Muslim guest)
then went on to repeat the right-wing claim that American intelligence
officials have stated that the refugees will have some terrorists among
them, and continued with Spencer:

HANNITY: Their plan is to bring in refugees from
countries without any ability to ascertain whether or not they have our
best interests at heart, or whether or not they buy into radicalism. Why
should we take in any of them?

SPENCER: There’s just no way, there’s no way to tell. We shouldn’t
take any of them. We should send them all to Saudi Arabia, where there’s
plenty of room, and where they have complete commonality
linguistically, culturally, and religiously. There’s absolutely no
reason. You know why the Saudis are not taking them? Because they know,
and they say openly, that there are terrorists among them.

The Islamic State, we should recall, last February, ISIS said they
were going to send 500,000 refugees into Europe – that was before the
crisis began. In September, one of their operatives said, ‘We’ve already
sent 4,000 jihadis into Europe.’ And the Lebanese education minister
just weeks ago estimated that there were 20,000 active jihadis among the
refugees in his country. It is absolutely impossible to tell the
jihadis from genuine refugees, and we shouldn’t take even one of them.
But the denial, Sean, it’s universal.… We’re setting ourselves up for a jihad attack on the scale
of Paris on New York, or Washington, or L.A. or Chicago or all of them.

In reality, while American intelligence officials have identified some areas of concern
when it comes to vetting refugees, none of them have claimed that
terrorists are certain to infiltrate the refugees – rather, they have
said that they cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that they will
not. “I can’t sit here and offer anybody an absolute assurance that
there’s no risk associated with this,” FBI Director James Comey told a
congressional hearing.

The vetting process for refugees is in fact far more arduous and requires many more levels of security checks
than any other means of entering the United States – especially in
comparison to the methods generally employed by terrorists entering the
United States in the past, that is, with tourist or other visitor visas
and using fake papers and passports. Refugees must wait up to two years
and endure at least five high-level background checks.

Moreover, the government of Saudi Arabia has explained that claims such as Spencer’s are “false and misleading”
regarding the flow of refugees into their nation: In fact, some 100,000
Syrians have fled to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the civil was
in their homeland, but are there as visitors, not refugees. The claim
that the Saudis are refusing them because of fears of terrorism are
utterly without basis.

Last Wednesday evening, Hannity invited Spencer back onto his program
to discuss the refugees in particular. Once again, he proceeded from
the misinformation claiming that U.S. intelligence experts were certain
that ISIS would infiltrate the ranks of the refugees:

HANNITY: Robert Spencer, let me begin with you. You heard
John Kerry, you see the president has dug his heels in and he's
insisting that America take in refugees even though we're being warned
by our intelligence officials. What is your reaction to this, and what
is the president, what is John Kerry not getting?

SPENCER: Well, it's insane to the point of suicidal. Just today the
Turks arrested eight Islamic State operatives who were posing as
refugees on their way to get into Europe. And so, what the president and
John Kerry are not getting, what they've never addressed is the
possibility of jihadis among the refugees and yet that's the whole big
elephant in the room that has everybody concerned about the refugee
problem. He tried to make into a religious -- a problem of religious
bigotry saying some people want to only take in the Christians and not
the Muslims. Well, the reason for that is that Muslims might blow us up
and the Christians are not going to.

Later in the program, after again talking over his Muslim guest, he returned to Spencer:

HANNITY: If this is what they’re saying, Robert Spencer,
then you’re right, this is suicidal. Problem is, the president’s
gambling with American lives. There’ll be blood on his hands if people
in fact infiltrate and kill Americans. Like they did in Paris.

SPENCER: Absolutely. No doubt about, Sean. Look, the Islamic State
told us this was coming. They threatened in February that they were
going to flood Europe with 500,000 refugees. They weren’t just trying to
trigger a social crisis, they were going to plant jihadis among the
refugees. They’ve already boasted that they’ve sent 4,000 into Europe,
more are coming. Now Barack Obama, without ever addressing that, is
going to bring this population over to the United States. People are
going to die as a result of this disastrous policy.

Fearmongering of this intensity, based on extremist claims that are
gross distortions of reality, has an effect when it’s blasted out to
nationwide audiences: One recent poll showed that a majority of Americans now want the Syrian refugee program halted.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.